Cycling has become a popular form of transportation for recreational as well as commuting purposes. Many bicycles, especially in the field of speed cycling, comprise step-in or clipless pedals. Said pedals are constructed to releasably engage a cleat that is mounted on the sole of a bicycle shoe. Said pedals roughly come in two types. The first type has cleat engagement mechanisms on both sides. This type is commonly used for off-road bikes. The second type has the engagement mechanism on just one side of the pedal. This second type is typically used on road-racing bicycles. The present invention mainly relates to the second type.
It was recognized in the present invention that without the correct cleats and shoes it is rather inconvenient to cycle with the said clipless bicycle pedals. Cycling with regular shoes and no cleats is therefore not recommended. When a user does desire to cycle with his regular shoes on, he or she could switch between regular pedals and clipless pedals. This is however highly cumbersome, because it requires changing the pedals of a bike.
It is possible to use the more flatter underside of the pedal. Although this is a possibility, it is rather unsafe on rainy days when the pedal becomes slippery. In addition, both sides of the pedal are not flat and do not offer much grip. Moreover, the centre of gravity of the pedal is such that the pedal rotates to a stable orientation in which the underside faces away from a direction of approach of the shoe of the rider. Therefore, it is very difficult to engage the underside with the shoe.
A cleat adapter that solves the abovementioned problem of cycling with regular shoes and clipless pedals is known, such as published under number US2016052593 (A1). In the disclosed construction, however, the centre of gravity of the pedal and cleat adapter assembly is negatively influenced by the cleat adapter. The bicycle pedal itself is designed to move to a predetermined, substantially vertical orientation when it is not engaged with a cleat. This standard and stable orientation helps the cyclist to easily engage the pedal with the cleat on his or her shoe in a routinely manner. The so called Fly Pedals of the abovementioned publication influence this standard, stable orientation, thereby increasing the difficulty level of placing a regular shoe on the correct side of the pedal. Another disadvantage of the Fly Pedals is the difficult manual decoupling of the Fly Pedal from the pedal, as experienced by its users. In addition, the user has to buy an extra pair of normal cleats, because the Fly Pedals are mounted on a normal cleat. Alternatively, the user has to change the cleats between cycling with shoes having cleats and cycling with the Fly Pedals. The latter option more or less defeats the purpose of the Fly Pedal.
Other bicycle pedal adapters exist which have parts which extend to below the bicycle pedal. The bikedap (www.bikedaps.com) is an example of such pedal adapters. These bicycle pedal adapters have a disadvantage in that they are quite large and bulky. Furthermore, these pedal adapters provide a foot support surface which is positioned too far to the rear instead of at the axis about which the pedal rotates. This results in a low quality user experience.
Finally, one could use the shoe cleat adapters themselves. However, they are not designed to be manually decoupled from the bicycle pedal. It requires quite some strength to remove these existing shoe cleat adapters by hand which could lead to injuries in the process. Also the concave and small foot support surface of the shoe cleat adapters do not make this a suitable alternative.